Veteran avant-rocker converts to electronica, with some success

As drummer in Eighties LA band Savage Republic, Brad Laner helped initiate the sombre dirge-rock later perfected by Godspeed You Black Emperor! In the early-Nineties, he fronted Medecine, who introduced aggresive shoegazing to America and made a decent record for Creation. An alleged 300 albums later, the protean Laner trades as Electric Company and occasionally adds guitar feedback to a host of fashionably messed-up digital glitches and chirrups. The more

Brad Laner, AKA Electric Company, makes odball, glitchy electronica that is informed by both the "playful" and "futuristic" ends of the spectrum. His desire to play the avant card, instead of simply letting rip, does get monotonous, but there are still plenty of bonkers moments to savour. "Yresbo", for example, is a mad carousel where mellow funk meets whaked out electronics, whilst "New Imbalance" is a stomping playful beast that mutates into a more

Like its predecessors, Slow Food is an album of flanged tones, rampant clicks & cuts, and kitchen sink effects. The demo Brad Laner submitted to Planet Mu emerges here with very few changes. Like experimental ambient peers Oval, Pan Sonic, and Pole, Laner fuels his music via glitches and distortions, foregoing traditional arrangements and more mathematical compositions. Slow Food works best when Laner tosses gentle melodies into the general sonic more

An album of quiet extremes, as Medecine's Brad Laner gets back in touch with his indie roots, rummaging through a ragged selection of electronic tones in search of the introspected and disruptive. Apart from an occasional gathering of effects, as on the threatening crescendos opening "Watch Yrself" and "Men's Pocky", his collaboration with Kid606, little is allowed it's full moment. Stuff tends to come and go too quickly over rhythms that often sound unimaginative and boxed in. He could have taken a little longer.